1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a 3D (three-dimensional) graphic pipeline module and, more particularly, to a system having a fragment pipeline graphic module.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer graphics is the technique of generating images or pictures in discernable form, such as on a display device or printer, with a computer. The generation of pictures or images is commonly called rendering. Generally, in three-dimensional computer graphics, geometry that represents surfaces (or volumes) of objects in a scene is translated into pixels and then displayed on the display device.
In computer graphics, each object to be rendered is composed of a number of primitives. A primitive is a simple geometric entity such as, e.g., a point, a line, a triangle, a square, a polygon, or high-order surface. A single primitive is also defined by a set of attributes that belongs to the primitive (e.g., colors, texture coordinates, and user-defined properties) and that are associated in a proper way to all the pixels of the screen. This information is included in a so-called fragment so that every pixel to be displayed on the screen can be rightly colored on the display according to the fragment attributes set at a certain pixel onto the screen.
The processing of a fragment is performed by a sub-graphic pipeline of a typical graphic pipeline called fragment graphic pipeline.
The OpenGL ES Standard imposes certain constraints on the order of the operative modules of a fragment graphic pipeline.
It is observed that the order of the operative module of the fragment graphic pipeline often implies processing of a fragment by expensive operation modules, even if the same fragment at the end of the fragment graphic pipeline processing is discarded because it does not have a displayable fragment on the screen.
Since bandwidth dedicated to expensive operative modules is usually limited, it has been noticed that there is a need for a fragment graphic pipeline that reduces unnecessary use of the bandwidth during processing of a fragment in the fragment graphic pipeline.